Displaced children in southern Lebanon face uncertain school year

Tyre, Lebanon. Thousands of children displaced by fighting between Israel and Hezbollah remain unable to return to their homes in southern Lebanon, with many living in public schools converted into shelters. As the academic year is due to begin on September 15, families face uncertainty over housing and their children’s education.

Schools used as shelters

The schoolyard in Tyre echoes with children playing despite the heat and distant sound of Israeli airstrikes. For many of the children, however, the public school is not a place of learning but their home.

Families displaced from towns in southern Lebanon have been living in schools or crowded rented apartments with extended relatives since fighting escalated six months ago.

Najah Ammar, 62, fled Israeli strikes in the coastal village of Mansouri and moved with her family to a public school in Tyre, about 10 kilometres north. Around 200 other families are living at the school.

Ammar said she is concerned about where her family will live when the school reopens and how her four school-aged grandchildren will recover from lost years of education.

“They’ve been out of school for two years — the last war and this war. My son’s daughter, the poor girl is eight years old. She was a second year and she’s still a second year,” she said.

Displacement and casualties

Since March 2, Israeli strikes have killed more than 4,300 people in Lebanon, including more than 250 children, and wounded another 12,000 people, including 1,000 children, according to Lebanon’s health ministry.

At the height of the fighting, more than one million people, nearly a quarter of Lebanon’s population, were displaced. Most have returned, but more than 340,000 people remain displaced because their hometowns have been destroyed or are located in territory occupied by Israel’s military.

Concerns over education costs

Rula al-Awad, 27, another displaced resident of Mansouri and mother of two, said she does not have enough education to help her daughter with online lessons. She brings her daughter pen and paper so she can continue writing.

Awad is staying in an apartment but takes her two children to the Tyre school to play. She wants to enrol them for the new academic year but is concerned she will not be able to afford schoolbooks and uniforms.